Anyone know why US Letter landed at 8.5x11 while most of my clients abroad send A4 (210x297mm)? I keep burning about 20 minutes swapping InDesign master pages and 3mm bleed settings when a brief crosses borders — curious about the history and any workflow trick to cut the admin.
But > about the history and any workflow trick to cut the admin. I use one.indt with two Alternate Layouts (Letter and A4) that share masters; bleeds are set per layout (0.125 in vs 3 mm) and Adjust Layout keeps margins in line so I edit once and export both. Liquid Layout can distort complex grids, so make the text frame Primary and lock key objects — want me to post a starter file?
But i cut that about 20 minutes by setting my parent pages to Liquid Page Rule: Scale and keeping Layout > Adjust Layout on — switching A4 (210×297mm) to Letter (8.5×11in) auto-resizes, and I just flip the ‘3mm bleed’ to 0.125in. It can squish tight grids, so test a spread first; Adobe’s overview is handy: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/liquid-layouts.html.
I keep one InDesign file with two “Alternate Layouts” — Letter and A4 — so masters and styles stay in sync; flip layouts in the Pages panel and export whichever the client needs. Only catch is watching image crops when the aspect ratio shifts (√2 vs Letter); this walks you through it: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/pages-spreads.html#create_alternate_layouts. Do you need both sizes live at once, or just a quick export?